“Just 16 micrograms per person per day of 4-methylimidazole is enough to pose a cancer threat, and most popular brown colas, both diet and regular, contain 200 micrograms per 20-ounce bottle.”
– Center for Science in the Public Interest
Cocaine tea is safer than diet soda
The United States government loves to treat its citizens like children.
“You can’t smoke a cigar, that might be bad for you!”
“Over the counter testosterone? Someone might get hurt!”
“No raw milk for you mister!”
It’s like having some kind of weird dotting mother who makes up nonsensical rules.
In Peru you can pretty much do whatever. I could go to the pharmacy, buy 100 tabs of Viagra and eat all of them. If I died the blame would be placed solely on me.
As I mentioned the other day, I hadn’t been feeling too well. While chatting with my parents on Skype, it was suggested that look for a special tea called mate de coca. My dad had traveled around South America back in the 1980’s and claimed that this beverage would help me to recover.
Skeptic, I decided to do a little Google research. Most of the results I found were fairly poor. A bunch of idiots over at clickbait sites had authored stupid posts calling it “cocaine tea.”
Although the drink is made from coca leaves, which can be refined to produce cocaine, it isn’t harmful or dangerous.
What mate de coca actually is
If you live in the states you’ll never get to try this drink. And that’s a huge shame. Mate de coca is a tea with a whole slew of health benefits.
The beverage gives you a little boost like coffee, but doesn’t contain any caffeine. Instead it contains a substance called inulin. There’s a whole Wikipedia article that can explain this better than I can, but here are some of inulin’s benefits:
- Provides energy
- Prevents intestinal problems
- Burns fat
- Boosts the immune system
In addition to this, mate de coca is full of vitamins. A, B-2, B-6, C and E are all present and accounted for. That means you’re getting a lot of antioxidants and vitamins in just one cup of tea. However, we still haven’t even gotten to the big question. The one on everybody’s mind.
How much cocaine is in mante de coca?
Since this tea is illegal in the United States it must be dangerous.
One cup will probably turn you into a drug addict, right?
Actually, mate de coca only contains about 4.2 milligrams of coca alkaloid. In comparison, a line of purified and refined cocaine has about 30 milligrams. You’d have to drink more than seven cups of mate de coca, in rapid succession, to, theoretically, have the same effect. However, in all my research I couldn’t find a single case in which anyone got high from drinking this beverage.
I haven’t seen any mate de coca addicts staggering around, or any evidence that the tea is even remotely harmful.
Soda is more dangerous than “cocaine tea”
There’s a beverage that’s one hundred times more deadly and dangerous than mate de coca. Its called soda and they sell it all over the country. There are no health benefits, people get sick from it, and sugary drinks are fueling the nation’s “obesity epidemic.”
Whenever you prepare to travel there are all kinds of warnings and advisories about how backwards and unsafe foreign cultures are. Folks who’ve never went anywhere will be the first to tell you what a bad idea you’re trip is. You’ll get a weird disease, the food will be awful, and locals will murder you.
In reality most nations, sans a few with ongoing wars and revolutions, are just as safe, and as dangerous, as the United States. You could get sick and attacked by locals in St. Louis just as easily as you could in St. Petersburg. Most of the “other countries are lawless cesspools” propaganda is fodder for Hollywood and nothing more.